Smartphone or Sex: Which Would You Rather Give Up? (Infographic)

Frequently covers crowdfunding, the sharing economy and social entrepreneurship.

April 18, 2014

Technology may be making us more efficient, but it is also making us human beings behave in exceptionally strange and awkward ways.

While 26 percent of Americans report that they can’t live without their smartphone, only 20 percent of Americans say they can’t live without sex, according to this infographic compiled by FinancesOnline.com, a personal finance website. Almost half of smartphone owners actually sleep with their phones, and nearly 7 in 10 cell phone owners report they check their phone even when it has made no noise to indicate that a message or voicemail has arrived.

And while we have become ever more obsessed with and dependent on the little computers we carry around in our pockets, we have become a bit more shy IRL (the acronym used in texting for “in real life”). For example, 7 in 10 single Americans say they are never really sure whether an outing with a person they like is considered a “date” or not. And while only 17 percent of Americans lived in a one-person household in 1970, nearly twice as many did in 2012.

Take a spin through the infographic below for more tidbits and factoids about how our social graces are moving inversely proportionally to the percentage of our lives we live on screens.